Tag: painting

I know this might be an odd item to post for Easter, but the last thing I expected to get out of a writing program was the discovery of a haunting painter. (Silly, as I ignored the fact that the class was in the Milton Rhodes Center for the Arts in Winston-Salem, NC)

Behind the lecturer was this painting entitled The Gathering.

Intense, no? I’ve seen a few graveyards like this, but not in this kind of light.

As great as the lecture was, I found myself studying this painting more than paying attention to the speaker. And I wasn’t alone. A couple of us took photos and one woman had already looked up the artist online at:

Once upon a time I wanted to be a painter. But well-meaning folks (or perhaps fearful) instilled in me the idea of the “starving artist.”

I heard things like, “You’ll starve to death.”

“Who would you run to when the rent came due?”

“It takes years to become good enough to make money with art.”

“Artists are born, not taught. You would have to have displayed an aptitude before you could walk.”

When I was very young, my grandmother rented a room in her house to a painter, whose work never showed in big galleries. I don’t even know how she made her living. I know she passed away before I graduated high school. And until I’d lost everything in a fire, I had the most exquisite realist painting of a fawn lying in tall grass that she had painted for me. I wanted to be like her and paint nature as she had. Joan Wilson was the first artist to make an impression on me. To this day, my cousin haunts garage sales and thrift stores in the hopes of discovering a piece of her lost work.

Realism done well astounds me. This weekend I walked into a small local gallery to the works of Ward Nichols, clutched my chest and gasped. Ask anyone who knows me and they will tell you that I am not easy to impress. I was on a cloud, which happened to be one of his favorite subjects. This is one of the few artists who makes his living from his art. At 86, he’s now celebrating 50 years as an artist and keeps a vulture near his easel to remind him to not waste a moment. His biography said that he knew he was born to be an artist because his name is Draw spelled backwards.

Cohesive, on display at the Wilkes Art Gallery

The detail in tiny blades of grass and bare tree branches, blemishes in the wood planks of dilapidated barns, tire treads in snow, and the bolts on each component of a steam locomotive took my breath away. His still life metal work is so flawless that I had to study each piece to be sure it was not a photograph. This artist understands light, use of negative space, and color restraint. He documents places that no longer stand and handles nostalgia like a historian.

Scissor table with pot

When I see work this elevated, I know in my heart that had I pursued that path I probably would never have achieved such success. So many don’t.

What made him such a stand-out?

Discipline, which is something I struggle with daily, and am intensely inspired by.

I loved the cast, the director, and the triumphant story. Generally speaking, I tend to love bio-pics, and I wanted to love this film. But collectively Big Eyes left me with unanswered questions.

The opening scene shows Amy Adams as Margaret Keane, packing frantically to flee an unhappy marriage. We follow her and her daughter to her new home, new job, and painting big-eyed waifs that were not taken seriously as art.

Even though her paintings were labeled as kitschy as The Velvet Elvis, she meets a fellow artist who lavishes nothing but praise on her work. And she appeared to see the red flag waving strongly over his con-artist head, but Walter was such a smooth-talker, she married him.

The film went on to suggest that Walter pioneered the concept of renting wall space to set up a gallery inside a night club, to sell both of their works, then discovered how bad press drew public attention. This reminded me a little of Forrest Gump’s antics triggering iconic slogans, and made me suspect the employment of creative license over actual events.

Margaret fell into the trap of going along with her husband claiming to be the real artist to keep the income flowing and peace in the house. I found it hard to believe that she managed to hide her truth from her own daughter who had been her only subject for years. She’s quickly dismissed when she suggests that the paintings looked like her mothers.

Walter seemingly pioneered poster and postcard prints in an age before the copy machine. Like any con artist, he easily manipulated Margaret, even after she discovered that he’d lied to her about his personal history early in their relationship. And even though it wasn’t shown in the film, it did not escape me that in the late fifties, the home and finances were governed by the man of house. Most women didn’t have access to the checkbook, much less their own money, even if they did work.

SPOILERS from here on. If you haven’t seen the film, you might want to stop reading.

Margaret finally came to her senses and took Walter to court to prove that she was the true artist. I truly hope the case was resolved as portrayed. I found it difficult to believe that the question of money never became a bone of contention.

I wanted to know how Margaret left Walter for a fresh start with no money, managing to live in a lovely home in Hawaii for a year before contacting him about legal separation. I wanted to know how he ended up dying penniless when he had control of her empire for years. I wanted to know how her career fared after the dust from the trial settled. All told, this film seemed a little too “on the nose” for Tim Burton whose comfort zone is creating his world. Or perhaps his vision was far grander than the truth.